Works
Vivekananda left a body of philosophical works. Only a handful of those were published during his lifetime. A notable theme in his works is different ways of worshiping suggested for varied types of individuals. Vivekananda observed that human could be classified into four categories—those who were in constant activity, or the worker; those who were driven by their inner urge, or the emotional; those who tended to analyse the working of their minds, or the mystical; and those who weighed everything with reason, or the rational. So he discussed four ways of worships—Karma yoga for the worker, Bhakti yoga for the emotional, Raja yoga for the mystical, and Jnana yoga for the rational. Majority of his published works were compiled from lectures given around the world. Vivekananda was a singer and a poet, and composed many songs and poems including his favourite Kali the Mother. He blended humour in his teachings; his language was lucid. His Bengali writings stand testimony to the fact that he believed that words—spoken or written—should be for making things easier to understand rather than show off the speaker or writer's knowledge.
Read more about this topic: Swami Vivekananda
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“The slightest living thing answers a deeper need than all the works of man because it is transitory. It has an evanescence of life, or growth, or change: it passes, as we do, from one stage to the another, from darkness to darkness, into a distance where we, too, vanish out of sight. A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own travelling brotherhood.”
—Freya Stark (b. 1893–1993)
“It is the art of mankind to polish the world, and every one who works is scrubbing in some part.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... no one who has not been an integral part of a slaveholding community, can have any idea of its abominations.... even were slavery no curse to its victims, the exercise of arbitrary power works such fearful ruin upon the hearts of slaveholders, that I should feel impelled to labor and pray for its overthrow with my last energies and latest breath.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)